Workers nationwide march for $15 and a union

BY MAGGIE TROWE

Demonstrations for $15 an hour, regular full-time schedules and a union took place all across the country Nov. 10, led by fast-food workers and attracting growing numbers of other low-wage workers.

Contingents of auto parts workers, UPS and Fedex drivers, nursing home workers and home health attendants, baggage handlers and cleaners employed through subcontractors by the airline giants, farmworkers, campus teaching assistants and retail workers took part. They are making gains, shedding fear of retaliation and building confidence.

Some 60 million workers in the U.S., 42 percent of all workers, earn less than $15 an hour.

In more than 270 cities there were fast-food workers who didn’t report to work and instead joined protests, said a press release by Fight for $15. They were joined by contingents of unionists, fighters against police brutality and others.

“I got involved in the movement a year ago when I was working at McDonald’s,” Mark Bradford, now a Pizza Hut worker, told the Militant at a rally in Chicago. “We had broken-down machines, rude management, and I quit because I was only making $8.30 an hour. I make $10 at Pizza Hut, which is still not enough. I go to Fight for 15 meetings every month.”

Several thousand marched in Los Angeles and New York, and multiple protests of over 1,000 took place in Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. Hundreds rallied in Boston and Washington. D.C.; 300 in Minneapolis; 225 in Atlanta; and 200 in Miami, Philadelphia, Detroit and Rochester, New York. More than 100 protested at the state Capitol in Hartford, Connecticut; in Richmond, Virginia; Baltimore; Fresno, California; and Durham, North Carolina. Dozens joined actions in Indianapolis, Phoenix, and Birmingham, Alabama. Workers protested at two McDonald’s in Jackson, Mississippi, and in small towns such as Muskegon, Michigan. Fifty rallied in Montreal outside the office of Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard.

At the downtown New York rally more than 1,000 members of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, most of whom make $10 an hour, formed a large and spirited contingent. In Los Angeles garment, car wash and laundry workers took part.

Walmart workers demanding $15 an hour and full-time work participated in many actions around the country.

“I’m glad to be here,” Quin Toomer, a Walmart worker, told the Militant at the march in Minneapolis. “We have to do this. If we don’t stand up for ourselves, who will?”

Fight for $15 making gains

During an early morning march down San Francisco’s Mission Street protesters rallied inside a McDonald’s. “We represent millions living at a poverty level,” Shonda Roberts, a Kentucky Fried Chicken worker who co-founded the East Bay Organizing Committee two years ago, told the demonstrators. “They can afford to pay us $15 an hour! And we have a right to unionize our co-workers. Our lives do matter.” Roberts recently won her job back after Fight for $15 supporters protested a retaliatory firing outside the KFC where she works.

Under pressure from the growing movement, a number of major employers — like Walmart, Target and McDonald’s — have announced modest wage increases to take place over the next couple of years. Some local governments, from New York state to Seattle have set higher minimum wage limits affecting certain categories of workers.

“McDonald’s and our independent franchisees support paying our valued employees fair wages aligned with a competitive marketplace,” the fast-food giant said in a statement released the day of the actions. “We believe that any minimum wage increase should be implemented over time so that the impact on owners of small and medium-sized businesses — like the ones who own and operate the majority of our restaurants — is manageable.”

Since 2009 the federal minimum wage has been stuck at the starvation level of $7.25 an hour. As the new movement began, President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress responded by proposing a new minimum of $10.10. Under increasing pressure, they raised their proposal to $12 by 2020.

Some of the large field of Republican presidential challengers in 2016 say they would consider a modest rise in the federal minimum, including Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania.

“My father carried mail on his back. His father was a coal miner,” Kasich said during a Republican candidates’ debate the same day as the national actions. “An economic theory is fine, but you know what? People need help.”

Others, including real estate mogul Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Chris Christie and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina say no way. Neurosurgeon Ben Carson flip-flopped this month, saying he is now opposed as well.

Wages are too high, and “we’re not going to be able to compete against the world,” front-runner Trump, who has campaigned as a defender of working people and their standard of living, said at the candidates’ debate. “I hate to say it, but we have to leave it the way it is.”

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton backs the position of Obama and her party’s congressional caucus for a $12 minimum wage.

Challenger Bernie Sanders says he backs a $15 minimum wage. He spoke at the Washington, D.C., Nov. 10 rally.

The Socialist Workers Party candidates in 2015 — Osborne Hart and John Staggs, for mayor and City Council in Philadelphia, and John Naubert for port commissioner in Seattle — are long-time participants in the movement for $15 and combatants in the labor movement. Hart and Staggs are Walmart workers.

“Working people need to organize a movement to form our own political party, a labor party based on the unions that can take the reins of power out of the hands of big business,” Staggs said at a candidates’ debate Oct. 27.

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Quebec: Framed-up rail workers plead ‘not guilty’
Walmart workers press for union rights in China
On the Picket Line
Wives of Steel rally backs locked-out ATI workers

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